Bernard Lim: What is a heart monitor?

Dr. Bernard Lim, a cardiologist with Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants, provides the answers on how heart monitors are used and the different types.

Bernard Lim

Dr. Bernard Lim, a cardiologist with Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants, provides the answers on how heart monitors are used and the different types.

Heart monitors are recording devices, which patients wear outside of hospital. The monitors help their cardiologist find out if their symptoms of racing heart beat, lightheadedness, dizziness, fainting spells or skipped beats are related to a specific arrhythmia or irregular rhythm, but the patient may be well enough not to have to be admitted to hospital.

Typically patients wear the monitor for between 24 to 48 hours. There is also a monitor, which the patient can wear for up to 30 days. For symptoms, which happen infrequently but are very disabling when they occur, there is also an implantable monitor, which is about the size of a cigarette lighter and is typically implanted underneath the left collarbone.

These monitors pick up the electrical activity from the heart. An arrhythmia or irregular heart beat is due to disordered electrical activity in the heart and if the heart monitor is able to pick up these abnormal electrical activity, your cardiologist may then refer you to a cardiologist who specializes in these kinds of rhythm disorders -- a cardiac electrophysiologist.

It may be possible that the symptoms a patient is feeling may not be related to a disorder of heart rhythm. It is possible to tell this by correlating the symptoms that the patient report in the diary that they submit with the heart monitor with the electrical rhythm that is recorded on the heart monitor.

A normal rhythm is usually reported as sinus rhythm or sinus tachycardia.

An abnormal rhythm that is detected may be due to a fast rhythm:

Atrial tachycardia or supraventricular tachycardia - a tachycardia that can arise from the upper chambers of the heart.
Ventricular tachycardia - a more dangerous and potentially life threatening kind of arrhythmia that can arise from the lower chambers of the heart .

An abnormal rhythm may also be due to a slow rhythm where the heart rate may be very low or there may even be instances where the heart actually stops beating. This is termed a pause. If the patient had been reporting symptoms of skipped beats, the monitor may pick up premature ventricular beats or premature atrial beats.

For more information, please refer to Heart Rhythm Society website at http://www.hrsonline.org/

Dr. Bernard Lim, is a cardiologist with Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants in Springfield, Ill.

If it is easier the abnormal rhythm bullet box section was the only section that was changed.

An abnormal rhythm that is detected may be due to a fast rhythm:

Atrial tachycardia or supraventricular tachycardia - a tachycardia that can arise from the upper chambers of the heart.
Ventricular tachycardia - a more dangerous and potentially life threatening kind of arrhythmia that can arise from the lower chambers of the heart.